Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
We are the 99%
"We are the 99%" is a political slogan widely used and coined during the 2011 Occupy movement. The phrase directly refers to the income and wealth inequality in the United States, with a concentration of wealth among the top-earning 1%. It reflects the belief that "the 99%" are paying the price for the mistakes of a tiny minority within the upper class.
"The 1%" is not necessarily a reference to top 1% of wage earners, but a reference to the top 1% of individuals by net worth, whose earned wages are only a fraction of their total sources of wealth.
The slogan "We are the 99%" became a unifying slogan of the Occupy movement in August 2011 after a Tumblr blog, "wearethe99percent.tumblr.com," was launched in late August 2011 by a 28-year-old New York activist going by the name of "Chris" together with Priscilla Grim.
Chris credited an August 2011 flyer for the NYC assembly "We The 99%" for the term. A 2011 Rolling Stone article attributed to anthropologist David Graeber the suggestion that the Occupy movement represented the 99%. Graeber was sometimes credited with the slogan "We are the 99%" but attributed the full version to others.
Mainstream media sources trace the origin of the phrase to economist Joseph Stiglitz's May 2011 article "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" in Vanity Fair, in which he was criticizing the economic inequality present in the United States. In the article Stiglitz spoke of the damaging impact of economic inequality involving 1% of the U.S. population owning a large portion of economic wealth in the country, while 99% of the population hold much less economic wealth than the richest 1%:
[I]n our democracy, 1% of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income … In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1% control 40% … [as a result] the top 1% have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99% live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1% eventually do learn. Too late.
Earlier uses of the term "the one percent" to refer to the wealthiest people in society include the 2006 documentary The One Percent about the growing wealth gap between the wealthy elite compared to the overall population, and a 2001 opinion column in the MIT student newspaper The Tech.
More than one publication dates the concept back much further. For instance, Gore Vidal spoke of "the one percent who own the country, whose power is increasing, not decreasing" in a 1987 interview with Playboy. The one percent and the 99 percent were explained in a February 1984 article titled "The USA: Who Owns It? Who Runs It?" in Black Liberation Month News, published in Chicago and available online as of 2020.
Hub AI
We are the 99% AI simulator
(@We are the 99%_simulator)
We are the 99%
"We are the 99%" is a political slogan widely used and coined during the 2011 Occupy movement. The phrase directly refers to the income and wealth inequality in the United States, with a concentration of wealth among the top-earning 1%. It reflects the belief that "the 99%" are paying the price for the mistakes of a tiny minority within the upper class.
"The 1%" is not necessarily a reference to top 1% of wage earners, but a reference to the top 1% of individuals by net worth, whose earned wages are only a fraction of their total sources of wealth.
The slogan "We are the 99%" became a unifying slogan of the Occupy movement in August 2011 after a Tumblr blog, "wearethe99percent.tumblr.com," was launched in late August 2011 by a 28-year-old New York activist going by the name of "Chris" together with Priscilla Grim.
Chris credited an August 2011 flyer for the NYC assembly "We The 99%" for the term. A 2011 Rolling Stone article attributed to anthropologist David Graeber the suggestion that the Occupy movement represented the 99%. Graeber was sometimes credited with the slogan "We are the 99%" but attributed the full version to others.
Mainstream media sources trace the origin of the phrase to economist Joseph Stiglitz's May 2011 article "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" in Vanity Fair, in which he was criticizing the economic inequality present in the United States. In the article Stiglitz spoke of the damaging impact of economic inequality involving 1% of the U.S. population owning a large portion of economic wealth in the country, while 99% of the population hold much less economic wealth than the richest 1%:
[I]n our democracy, 1% of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income … In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1% control 40% … [as a result] the top 1% have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99% live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1% eventually do learn. Too late.
Earlier uses of the term "the one percent" to refer to the wealthiest people in society include the 2006 documentary The One Percent about the growing wealth gap between the wealthy elite compared to the overall population, and a 2001 opinion column in the MIT student newspaper The Tech.
More than one publication dates the concept back much further. For instance, Gore Vidal spoke of "the one percent who own the country, whose power is increasing, not decreasing" in a 1987 interview with Playboy. The one percent and the 99 percent were explained in a February 1984 article titled "The USA: Who Owns It? Who Runs It?" in Black Liberation Month News, published in Chicago and available online as of 2020.